


they all go into the dark

by thinksideways



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, PWP, Will's POV, catacomb sex, divergence from primavera, forgiveness kink, if that's a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinksideways/pseuds/thinksideways
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will is dimly aware that they are surrounded by skeletons, but then, most of their relationship was built upon carnage, and he doesn’t see why this should be any different.</i>
</p><p>Primavera divergence where they fuck in the catacombs instead of hiding from each other like shy schoolchildren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they all go into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written, so dear god, be kind. But ever since I saw Primavera I've had a scene in my head of how their interaction might go down if Hannibal was on, say, HBO instead of NBC, so...I'm bringing it to life.
> 
> Oh, this is also for my dear fellow Fannibal Sarah, who is going to receive this as part of a secret santa in July kind of thing. Hello, Sarah. I hope you like explicit Hannigram fanfic.

_O dark dark dark._

_They all go into the dark._

_\-- T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”_

He knows Hannibal is here; his presence has always been something tangible. He closes his eyes, pretends. Hannibal’s skin is easy to slip into, an abyss that welcomes Will. Will fades away, gone, and he thinks:

_I knew exactly how to cut you. I wanted you to live. I wanted you to have a second chance. The teacup cannot unshatter itself, but sometimes the pieces can be glued._

_I leave you my broken heart. Every twist of the body had a purpose. Every manipulation. I need you to see my heart, and this is how I can show you. I am writing you a poem in broken bones and torn tissue, I am saying: you broke us, but I forgive you, do you forgive me?_

_I am here, I am waiting for you._

_I cannot reverse time but I can endure it, for you._

_This is my design,_ he thinks, the old, familiar ritual, but the memory of Hannibal’s latest creation is still wrapped around him. He feels blood dripping from his hands but when he turns the palms over they are clean.

“I forgive you,” says Will, to the man hiding in the catacombs, to the monster.

 

 ****

 

He waits, and time feels strange again, like it’s holding its breath. Will holds his, too, the lungs burning. He listens in the dank air, to the queer stillness of the skeletons, and then there are footfalls, barely audible.

“I forgive you,” he repeats. His hand flutters like a bird over his stomach, at the memories of bandages and blood-blossoms there. Looking into the eyes of the man killing you is strange. Standing here, forgiving him, is even stranger.

“Hello, Will,” says Hannibal. His voice is soft, tender. He’s still in the shadows of the catacombs, but Will’s spent weeks at sea replaying the man’s movements, and he knows the shape of him anywhere.

He comes closer and Will watches him, remembers.

 

 **** 

 

 ( _I could never entirely predict you_ , Hannibal had said, fingers against the line of Will’s jaw and there was a moment there, a moment of something promised but not fulfilled.)

 

 **** 

 

( _We couldn’t leave without you_ , Hannibal had said, and hadn’t some part of Will been glad for it, that he could see him again? The hand had crept there to the back of the neck then, too, and Will had thought surely, surely now Hannibal would cross the line that had somehow been drawn between them, that somehow, they could kiss and make up.

They didn’t kiss.

Instead, he’d felt the bite of the knife, mind spinning with the sensations – Hannibal’s fingers on his neck, the vivisection taking place between them, and the beginning of the need, perverse but insistent, to forgive.)

 

**** 

 

Hannibal comes closer and Will watches him, unsure how to categorize the way his stomach flips and heartbeat quickens. Fear or arousal or both, he doesn’t know, all he knows is finally, eight months later, Hannibal is here before him, the sea between them crossed, the broken heart writ large.

Memory will never do Hannibal justice. Memory cannot populate the hot darkness of Hannibal’s gaze, the way Will feels pinned beneath the weight of it, an animal in the iron jaws of a trap.

Hannibal is close enough to touch, but Will does not cross that line, the strange one drawn between them at some point in their dubious courtship. It is a line Will both longs to erase and dreads erasing.

Hannibal’s lips quirk, like he knows what Will is thinking. He probably does.

“You sailed here,” Hannibal says. It’s not a question. Will opens his mouth, starts to ask how he knew, then stops. Hannibal can smell the salt on him. He likely smells other things, too – the fear, the arousal, the need.

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal continues, “did you come here just to grant me forgiveness? Or perhaps there is something else.”

There is something else. There has always been something else, an unspoken promise forged between the two of them.

“I want to know you,” Will says, “you’ve always been so inscrutable. You’re like the labyrinth and the minotaur all in one.”

“And how do you want to know me, Will?”

Will doesn’t answer; instead he reaches his hand up, places it on Hannibal’s neck beneath the ridge of his jaw. His thumb strokes the skin and bone beneath.  Hannibal’s own hand reaches up, covers Will’s, holds it there. It’s a reversal: Will’s the one with his hand to Hannibal’s jaw, at the jugular, thinking, _I never know myself so well as I do when I’m with you._ Thinking of an old T.S. Eliot poem, of one particular line: _o dark dark dark. they all go into the dark_. A poet writing about the renewal of man and Will feels renewed, here, emerging from his chrysalis, ready, even eager, to go into the dark.

That line drawn between them quivers, a bowstring strung too tightly, fraying.

Will waits for Hannibal to say something else, something enigmatic and metaphorical, but instead Hannibal drops the hand covering Will’s, shifts his head slightly to meet his gaze. Will wants to fidget, uncomfortable at the intensity of it, the knife-sharpness of his stare, but he doesn’t. He meets it.

“Show me, Will.”

He does.

His fingers move from the jaw to the back of Hannibal’s neck, pull him closer. The kiss is awkward at first, a burn of stubble, too overwhelmed with fear and need to have any sort of finesse. Will kisses cautiously for a moment but feeling the other man’s mouth open, moving with him, encourages him. His fingers tighten and he presses harder, other hand reaching to wrap around Hannibal’s waist.

He falls into it, the rhythm. Hannibal rests one hand on Will’s hip, the other buried in his hair. Will realizes he is being guided, pressed back against the catacomb walls, cornered. Hannibal breaks the kiss, moving his lips instead to Will’s jaw, nudges down to his neck. The hand buried in his hair pulls back, tilts his head, exposes his throat. Will moans as lips and tongue and teeth move down his neck, mark the veins there. Hannibal’s fingers tighten against hair and hip at the noise, and his efforts redouble. Will’s hair is released as Hannibal moves his hand to pull at Will’s shirt, exposing his collarbone. He feels teeth against his skin, marking, and moans again. His own hands scrabble against Hannibal, unable to stay still. They skate over his back, comb through his hair, scratch lightly at the back of his neck (and then not so lightly as Hannibal licks a trail up his neck and breathes ‘ _Will’_ hot in his ear).

Hannibal presses into him, and Will can feel the hardness of him against his hip. He shifts slightly, rolls his body against him, eliciting a low moan from Hannibal. He feels the moan in every part of him, rolls his hips again, bites lightly at Hannibal’s jaw. He is dimly aware that they are surrounded by skeletons, but then, most of their relationship was built upon carnage, and he doesn’t see why this should be any different.

 

 **** 

 

Hannibal shrugs off his jacket, manages to do so without disconnecting his mouth from Will’s. He relieves Will of his jacket as well, and the t-shirt beneath. The rough stone scrapes his bared shoulders as Hannibal presses him back against the walls.

Hannibal regards Will’s bare chest, takes note of the scar there, the one he left. He touches it, lightly, almost reverently.

“It still hurts,” he says. It is not a question.

“Yes,” replies Will. The scar doesn’t hurt anymore, except perhaps with phantom pains. But the memory keeps him awake. The memory that left him salt-stained and here, in the shadows, laid bare before a monster.

This all runs through his mind until Hannibal presses his hand against Will through his jeans, palm moving in small circle. Hannibal continues the movements, the other hand undoing Will’s pants with easy dexterity until he can fully slip his hand in, wrap his fingers around Will’s cock, strokes him, rough and dry. It almost hurts, it’s almost exquisite, and Will doesn’t know what to say so he buries his mouth against Hannibal’s neck, which seems to say enough for Hannibal to withdraw his hand long enough to spit in it before returning to Will’s cock.

He holds onto Hannibal like he’s a drowning man. In many ways he supposes he is. He doesn’t know what will come, later, with the line that was once between them gone, the threshold crossed. Where either of them will go, after.

(If there will be an after.)

Hannibal falls to his knees, not seeming to care about the grimy stone floor. He tugs Will’s pants down to his ankles and takes Will’s cock into his mouth, a slick, practiced motion that is both filthy and graceful.

It’s nothing that Will hasn’t experienced before, but the voracity with which Hannibal takes him seems to alight every nerve of his body. He can feel Hannibal’s tongue exploring, slicking along the ridge of his cock’s head, back down along the underside. His hands work Will as well, one gliding along the shaft and the other, slick with spit, cupping his balls before moving past, slowly slipping inside of him, just barely, teasing his open.

He’s helpless as he’s ever been with Hannibal, made pliant by his ministration as Hannibal’s spit-slicked finger fucks into him, unlocks him with that same filthy grace. Hannibal hums a little around Will’s cock, pleasurably, a noise deep in his throat. His motions don’t stop, mouth undoing Will in ways he can barely comprehend, fingers scissoring him open, into the warm slick of him, and he continues to make that hum and the sheer _pleasure_ that flavors the noise is what finally sends Will over, sends his hands grasping into Hannibal’s hair.

“Oh god, Hannibal I-,” he says, but Hannibal increases his suction, crooks his fingers inside of him and Will is _gone,_ the world tunneling down to this moment, not darkness but a light, a brilliant white light and he thinks, just barely, _I’m dying_.

 

  ****

 

He wants to collapse, after, feels loose-limbed like Hannibal had sucked the very marrow from his bones (something Hannibal has probably considered, if Will wants to be fair). But Hannibal is there, rising from his knees to steady Will, to cup his hand against the back of Will’s neck, to kiss him (he can taste himself in the kiss and it sends a jolt to his softening dick).

“I forgive you,” says Hannibal, shifting Will to step him out of his puddled jeans before removing his own pants. Will sees Hannibal pull out a foil packet of lube and thinks, bewildered, _he prepared for this_.

(Of course he did. Hannibal was always prepared for all things, why should this be any different?)

“I forgive you,” Will replies, because he knows Hannibal wants to hear it again. Hannibal smiles, a fleeting moment of tenderness between them before Hannibal kisses him, bites his lip and draws blood. He pulls Will away from the wall, grabs his hair again, licks the blood from his mouth before he turns him around. Will’s hands go out instinctively, palms press against the wall as Hannibal’s fingers, now wet with lube, slide back inside him.

“I want to feel you, Will,” he says, adding a third finger, and Will realizes he is fucking back into Hannibal’s hand, still greedy for him, a need cultivated over the months in his absence.

“Yes,” Will manages to gasp out, arching into Hannibal’s fingers. It’s easier, like this, facing the wall rather than Hannibal. Not having to face that smoky gaze.

Hannibal is precise in the way he opens Will, measured. There is another foil packet ripping, and Hannibal pauses to roll the condom on, and then he can feel the head of his cock pressing in, penetrating him. The pressure is strange and new, but the knowledge that it’s _Hannibal_ breaching him – Hannibal, who has already breached him in so many ways – makes the slow burn of it something wanton, something hot, makes Will moan as Hannibal slides in further, fills him. He moves slowly, much slower than his fingers had. His hands are on Will’s hips, gripping tight, the only sign of his desperation. The rhythm increases, and soon Will is arching hungrily back into him, hard again, hands still pressed against the wall.

It occurs to Will that this is probably the worst possible kind of blasphemy, two murderers fucking below a church, surrounded by the dead. He wonders if God will strike them down, collapse the church roof. It would be right, in a way, another article for Hannibal’s collection.

And then Hannibal reaches around and takes Will’s cock in his hand, strokes him. He’s fucking Will harder now, and Will is blaspheming, moaning _oh god, oh fuck,_ and suddenly sacrilege doesn’t matter anymore.

Hannibal bites his shoulder, tears the flesh, and it should hurt but instead he comes with a shout and Hannibal follows soon after, teeth still sunk into his flesh.

 

  ****

 

“Do you feel you know me now, Will?” asks Hannibal as he slips back into his clothes. Will smiles. He is still shaky, body now realizing its soreness – the bites and scrapes and breaching – and he moves gingerly as he gets dressed.

“I’m learning,” he says, although there are still a thousand things he needs to know about this man, debauched things that bring a flush to his cheeks in the gloom.

The question hangs, unasked: _what now?_

What now, with the last line between them breached and fallen, with Will marked and sore and Hannibal disheveled, knees stained? What now, with these things said and unable to be taken back, with Will knowing the deep, almost pained noises Hannibal makes when he comes?

Hannibal is watching him, that same smoky gaze. He extends a hand, palm facing upward like a beggar.

“I forgive you, Will,” he says.

Will reaches out, interlocks his fingers with Hannibal. It feels strangely intimate; odd, that for all that’s transpired between them, they had never joined hands.

“I forgive you,” he says.

The teacup does not unshatter, time does not reverse – but pieces are glued, patchwork, as the two men go into the dark together, forgiven.


End file.
